Over 250 artworks make up the foundation’s collection – the result of a passion for the sea and shipping handed down from generation to generation by the Clerici family.
Starting from this vocation, Paolo Clerici began to collect works of maritime figurative art in the 1970s.
The works belong to an unexpected and little-known artistic genre: from Captain Paints, actual portraits of ships commissioned by commanders, to Port Portraits, the scenery inhabited by ships, bearing witness to the hard work in the ports.
Sailing ships, merchant steamships, transatlantic liners, but also the modern and gigantic bulk carrier cargo ships as well as port landscapes such as Amsterdam, London and Liverpool became part of the collection, embellishing the company’s offices according to a historic custom of shipping companies and agencies.
A long journey through the history of navigation from the mid-19th century to the present day, an era of historic changes, the first being the transition from sail to steam.
A journey signed by renowned artists such as Adam, Craffonara, De Simone, Klodic, Mohrmann, Roullet and today Locci, Sambuy, Veerdorn and Bayter to hand down stories of ships, storms, shipwrecks, torpedoes and especially captains, sailors and ship owners and their adventures at sea.
